Preview vs Stirling PDF
as AI assistants see them, week of 2026-10-26
Preview and Stirling PDF land in a dead heat overall, both scoring 17 out of 100, though the path there differs. Preview shows up in 21 of 68 answers, with a perfect 3 of 3 for "best PDF editor for Mac," but it's never named for privacy, OCR, or Windows-editor questions. Stirling PDF appears in 17 of 68 answers and sweeps "best open-source or self-hosted PDF tool" at 3 of 3, plus solid showings on privacy and browser-based editing, but it's shut out on redaction, form-filling, and conversion questions. Head to head, Preview was named more often on 8 questions, Stirling PDF on 5, with 7 ties.
Head to head
| metric | Preview | Stirling PDF |
|---|---|---|
| score | 23 | 16 |
| questions won | 14 | 16 |
By assistant
Preview
| assistant | score | named in, this week | usual spot, this week |
|---|---|---|---|
| ChatGPT | 15 | 20% of answers | #5.8 |
| Claude | 37 | 45% of answers | #4.4 |
| Gemini | not sampled this week | ||
| Perplexity | not sampled this week |
Stirling PDF
| assistant | score | named in, this week | usual spot, this week |
|---|---|---|---|
| ChatGPT | 6 | 10% of answers | #2.0 |
| Claude | 31 | 60% of answers | #6.2 |
| Gemini | not sampled this week | ||
| Perplexity | not sampled this week |
Where they differ
Only Preview gets named for
- What's the best PDF editor for Mac?
- What's the best tool to fill in and sign a PDF form?
Only Stirling PDF gets named for
- What's the best open-source or self-hosted PDF tool?
- What's the best OCR tool to make a scanned PDF searchable?
- What's the best online PDF editor that works in the browser?
- What's the best PDF editor for Windows?
More comparisons
- PDF-XChange Editor vs Preview
- PDFgear vs Preview
- Preview vs Smallpdf
- Foxit vs Preview
- PDF Expert vs Stirling PDF
- PDF24 vs Stirling PDF
Not sold on either?
Scores count how often each assistant names a product, weighted by position. How the score works · Full PDF editors leaderboard